|
 
|
 |
Pandorum
(2009)
  
|
Director:
Christian
Alvart |
COUNTRY
USA |
GENRE
Thriller/Science Fiction |
NORWEGIAN TITLE
Pandorum |
RUNNING
TIME
108
minutes |
|
Producer:
Paul W. S. Anderson
Jeremy Bolt
Robert Kulzer |
Screenwriter:
Travis Milloy
Christian Alvart |
Review
Christian Alvart is a name
worth taking note of, even if his first international feature, entitled
Pandorum, is a highly flawed film which turned out to be a
box-office flop. Alvart had made a name for himself with the daring
Antikörper (Antibodies) in his native Germany, when he was
given the chance to direct a film based on a script by Travis Milloy.
This script was then merged with an original script by Alvart himself
and became Pandorum. The result is every bit as disparate as one
may suspect, but that doesn't take anything away from the quality of
Alvart's idea, realized in the film's brilliant first and final parts;
two astronauts awake from hypersleep suffering from amnesia aboard a
seemingly desolate sleeper ship, and must try to find out who they are
and what went wrong.
Alvart's direction in these
segments is full of tension, shrewdness and delightful paranoia, and
much of the script is intelligent enough to be considered watertight -
at least to the same degree as the ship. Unfortunately, the film's
middle part is marred by abundances of conventional action segments
which indulge themselves and don't fit into the film's otherwise
philosophical and smouldering atmosphere. We're not talking Arnold in a
Bergman film, but you get the picture.
Since I've always
maintained that a good ending is the be-all and end-all for science
fiction stories, I choose not to remember Pandorum for its trite
and sterile action masturbation (in which cliches are rehashed to
excess), but for Alvart's classy and inspired wrap-up. My theory is that
if the young German hadn't been under massive studio pressure,
Pandorum may well have become a classic entry in the genre, and
sometimes you just have to applaud and enjoy potential.
|
|
